Eclipse in the Pacific

This week marked a rare total eclipse of the sun for parts of the Eastern Hemisphere. The path of totality took the moon’s shadow through parts of China and India, and then out into the Pacific, where the path arced to the south. Totality didn’t extend to Yap, unfortunately, but the moon’s shadow still obscured about half of the sun in these parts. We came home at lunch to see what we could see. Without specialized equipment such as welder’s glasses, a pinhole camera is the best way to indirectly observe an eclipse.

Here’s Matt in action, reflecting the sunlight shining through our pinhole camera onto the wall of our house.

And a closeup view of the eclipse’s reflection at its maximum.

We would have loved to have been in the path of totality, but that’s a pretty rare occurrence. After all, the earth won’t see another total eclipse of this duration for more than a century.

Sunday was KC’s birthday (29! Again!), and we celebrated with a trip to a beach owned by Matt’s colleague, Jonathan. Jonathan is a bit shy of the camera. Here he is with KC.

Jonathan’s beach is beautiful, and we took a tour on a sea kayak at low tide. Pockets of coral are numerous and shallow enough that you have to be careful of where you put your paddle. From out in the lagoon, the shoreline all looks the same, so when we were finished paddling we accidentally took a tour of some of the neighboring beaches before finally finding our way home in a gentle rain shower. Although the showers got us wet, they also brought us this beautiful rainbow.

We wrapped up the day by feasting on grilled fresh tuna, while having the local mosquito population feast on any skin that we had left exposed. All in all, a nice birthday here in paradise.